I’ve been in a space of noticing, noticing again, and noticing more. This noticing centers around a persistent dynamic that seems to be expressed in social change or social purpose-oriented organizations. The specific social change spheres I am moving in currently are those of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and social healing and so these reflections will focus from my perspectives and experiences in these spaces.
What I am noticing is that many of these organizations that are oriented externally toward building peace and transforming conflict are themselves enmeshed in conflict. This used to create confusion in me. It felt incongruent. How come our efforts for peace are so embroiled in the dynamics that are the anthesis of that which we are pursuing?
Now I inhabit a different perspective. Nestled within this challenge is an opportunity: How can we pursue our missions of peace and justice in a way that is congruent with this very vision? This orients us toward process – to reckon honestly with how our processes of organizing replicate the dynamics we are seeking to transform, and to inquire into how we can organize in a way that embodies the change we are seeking to create.
This inquiry has guided me into the fractal of relationship. Relationships are the vehicle through which social healing and change unfold. They the terrain in which we can practice the embodiment of change. From my perspective and orientation to this work (a space of continuous learning, unlearning, and reflection), this invites a practice of relationship that is grounded in sincerity, authenticity, care, and love.
I am currently navigating unfolding encounters into the relational landscape of philanthropy. One expression of these encounters is that of the relationship between donors and partners. Drawing forth the threads of reflection shared above, I have found myself wondering about the role and responsibility of funders when partner organizations experience conflict or fracture. Far from answers or clarity, this has led me into an array of questions:
- What is the quality of relationship between a donor and partner that enables a partner to share honestly about the challenges their organization is experiencing without fear of negative consequence?
- What are the organizational and relational structures in place that enable conflict to be met with care?
- How can opportunities be crafted or created to enter into conversational spaces that are conducive to honest, open sharing?
- How can we expand notions of the resourcing funders provide beyond finances to more holistic forms of accompaniment?
- Where is there room for mutual transparency – where funders and partners can share transparently challenges they have navigated or are navigating?
- How can donor-partner relationships embody a quality of relationship across differentials of power and positionality that is reflective of the constellation of relationships we might seek to co-create in a world characterized by justice, dignity, and care?
In the relational landscape these questions ask into, I sit on the periphery and somehow maybe also in the middle. I am not of a funding organization, nor a partner organization, yet I am connected to both. I am listening, curious, unsure yet utterly convinced that our relationships across all scales of change are both the soil and the seeds from which transformation grows. In each encounter along our journeys of co-accompaniment, we are granted the opportunity and perhaps even imbued with the responsibility to till the soil, to tend the seeds that hold within them the change we seek. In my personal practice, drawing on the words of Grace Lee Boggs, this entails cultivating a “limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.”
This cultivation is slow, circular, always ever incomplete. Perhaps because ‘completeness’ or ‘success’ is not the point. Rather, it is to be in the process. To be committed to try, try differently, and try again.
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